Once you’ve learned to accept that being way OTT is at the core of the 175-year-old America’s Cup circus as we sail on into Q2 of the 21st Century - with all sorts of predicted Armageddon and end-of-days dates stretching far astern – then you can just sit back and enjoy the show. And though the official staging of the Louis Vuitton-sponsored 38th America’s Cup at Bagnoli on the north shore of the spacious Bay of Naples doesn’t begin until next year - with the first race for the actual match for the cup itself being set for July 10th 2027 - there are already sparring races going on now off Cagliari in Sardinia.
At the end of May 2025, when the photo appeared of America’s Cup supremo Grant Dalton in the Vatican garden of a Sunday morning with Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni cradling what multi-challenger Thomas Lipton called “The Auld Mug”, we reckoned that the Naples venue was a done deal. It was an opinion that was retained despite some thoughtful demurring emails from AC rules experts, because at the time Meloni was at the height of her popularity, and she could walk on water if so required.
The America’s Cup Partnership agreement between the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and the Royal Yacht Squadron is signed in Auckland, with Ben Ainslie RYS left, and Grant Dalton, CEO America’s Cup, on right. Full points to anyone who spots that Thomas Lipton’s 1914-1920 RUYC Challenger Shamrock IV is displayed on the wall behind Dalton, together with her racing flag. Photo ACP
Since then, she has had a bit of a populist downer with the recent rejection – admittedly close - in a referendum on her proposals to reform the judiciary. Though she’s Italy’s longest-serving Prime Minister since World War II, this hint of volatility in the electorate will be seen by pessimists as the beginning of the slide. But the high profile America’s Cup 2027 is surely by now sufficiently well enough embedded in Naples to withstand political turmoil in Rome.
FIVE TEAMS FOR NAPLES
There are currently five teams officially entered to race in the foiling AC 75s:
- Emirates Team New Zealand - Defender (New Zealand)
- GB1 – Challenger of Record (GB)
- Luna Rossa – Challenger (Italy)
- Tudor Team Alinghi – Challenger (Switzerland)
- K-Challenge – Challenger (France).
While the inevitable in-team and inter-team disputes have been simmering beneath the surface, it rather looks as though the beginning of the preliminaries afloat has opened up old wounds in a more public way. Back in 2024 at Barcelona, Ben Ainslie’s GB challenge was largely supported by mega-businessman Jim Ratcliffe of Ineos and Manchester United, among other things. But they fell out, and in recent days Ratcliffe has been taking legal moves to take over the 2024 challenge boat, in which he claims to have a significant ownership interest. This is the Britannia, which is valued at £180 million, and her “repossession” at this stage would remove a cornerstone of the Ainslie challenge campaign.
A joy for m’learned friends….the disputed Ineos Britannia
Doubtless a deal can be done, even if at the moment the way of the world does not seem to favour those who see themselves as great deal-makers. Either way, it’s a situation which is causing much lip-smacking among America’s Cup observers, and indeed anyone who is fascinated by a nice juicy high profile legal row involving lots of money and larger-than-life characters.
AMERICA’S CUP REACHED HIGHEST LEVELS FROM THE START
The fact that the America’s Cup has gone to the highest levels of government and society and commerce is nothing new. When the popular John Cox Stephens of New York with his schooner America won the first race round the Isle of Wight in 1851, his clinching of the victory on the finish line at Cowes was watched by Queen Victoria from the lawns of Cowes Castle, and she famously enquired what yacht was second, only to be told there was no second in a race of this nature.
Cowes Castle, home today of the Royal Yacht Squadron. At the time of the first America’s Cup race in 1851, it was owned and used as one of his summer bases by the Marquess of Anglesey, founding Commodore in 1851 of the Royal Irish YC. In 1848 he donated to the RYS the silver trophy which, since 1851, has been known as the America’s Cup. In 1854 he leased the Castle to the RYS, who later bought it for their HQ.
The future Queen Empress was conveyed down to America’s berth in Cowes to congratulate John Cox Stephens personally, a gesture which added lasting celebrity glitter to it all. And it was high politics too, as the UK and the US had been at war as recently as 1812, while the really-entrenched elements in the Establishment still felt that American Independence of 1876 was a passing fad that would eventually be rectified.
It’s intriguing to remember that the Royal Irish Yacht Club’s founding Commodore in 1831, the Marquess of Anglesey, was much involved in these history-making events. In 1851, Cowes Castle was still one of his summer homes, but his fellow-members of the Royal Yacht Squadron were often welcomed to it.
America win in 1851. The long dead run up the western Solent put her at a disadvantage as the taller rigged cutters astern were able to set enormous masthead spinnaker. But by goose-winging her little foresail, she managed to stay ahead.
At the time, the RYS had been in difficulties as their commodore, also with Irish connections, was the hugely undiplomatic Marquess of Donegall who was driving members away from Squadron activities. Concerned by this, Anglesey donated an off-the-shelf £100 silver cup to revive Squadron racing in 1848, but it was still sitting there unused when America turned up looking for competition in 1851.
The hundred quid cup was used for an extra race round the Isle of Wight, tacked on to the end of Cowes Week. So well did the finish go as a sports theatrical experience that when the ageing Anglesey offered Cowes Castle for lease in 1854, the Squadron took it on, bought it outright some years later, and now it is the emblem of the starting and finishing line for events large and small at Cowes.
NO AMERICA CHALLENGE AT NAPLES NEXT YEAR
Ironically, although the New York Yacht Club staged 24 continuous successful defences of the America’s Cup until the Australians of the Royal Perth YC took it from them in 1983 in International 12 Metre yachts at Newport, there won’t be an American presence in the racing next year. Yet the ghost of the schooner America herself haunts the Bay of Naples.
The George Steers-designed America’s lines – taken off in England after her victory – showed a hull which balanced so well that she could be steered by a rudder which was little more than a trim tab, controlled by a tiller “which didn’t seem much more than a broom handle”. It meant she was slow if sure when tacking, and a race round the Isle of Wight suited her more than a race in the Solent
With her success achieved, John Cox Stephens had sold her three weeks later on September 1st 1851 to John de Blaquiere, 4th Baron de Blaquiere. His family had originally been Huguenot refugees in Kent, but eventually made their fortune in the Dublin administration in Ireland, where their improving fortunes were used to provide a home base at an extensive estate at Ardkill, in the north in County Derry.
But in the 4th Baron’s ownership, America was soon on her way south for Mediterranean cruising, and an account from 1852 happily describes her wonderful sailing performance crossing a moonlit Bay of Naples.
America herself is now gone, having been flattened beyond restoration in 1942 with the collapse of a storage shed under an exceptional fall of snow at Annapolis Yacht Yard, where she was in the care of the US Navy. But there is at least one authentic America replica in Italy (or there was when I was last in Venice), and her presence at Bagnoli next year would seem very appropriate.
SAILING INTERACTS WITH THOSE IN POWER
The interaction of sailing or yachting with those in supreme power and enjoying enormous wealth operates at several different levels, They range from those for whom their professionally-run Superyacht is effectly no more their own private ocean liner, to a more hands-on approach when sailing is brought into the equation.
Early yachtsmen loved to claim that the first yachting enthusiast was Cleopatra with her barge on which:
the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them;
…..At the helm,
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands.
Thus we have the first yacht, and the first recorded woman helm, though doubtless Mrs Noah did her stint on the steering aboard The Ark. But so lasting was Shakepeare’s evocation of Cleopatra’s yacht that when the first avowed yacht America – an 83ft brigantine - was built in the raw new USA in 1816 for George Crowninshield, he named her Cleopatra’s Barge.
George Crowninshield’s 83ft brigantine Cleopatra’s Barge, built in 1816 and the first vessel in America to be designed for use as a yacht
Of course there were royal or state yachts for ceremonial use or simply for the pleasure of sailing by the great and the good before this, and the great Dutch Republic led the way in developing this, resulting in Charles II bringing yachts with him when he was restored to the English throne from The Netherlands in 1660, with the king and his brother James becoming genuine enthusiasts, with the fascinatingly modern feel of their activities afloat being well captured by Samuel Pepys in his Diaries.
It can reasonably be claimed that the Royal example in the 1660s had something to do with the formation of the Water Club of the Harbour of Cork in 1720, as the great grandfather of the founding Admiral - the 4th Earl of Inchiquin - was Murrough O’Brien who had settled in Rostellan Castle on the east shore of Cork Harbour as a peace of sorts descended in the mid 1660s, and he brought with him an enthusiasm for sailing acquired when he shared the exile of the English Royals in the Netherlands.
Yachts of the 1720-founded Water Club of the Harbour of Cork, as painted by Peter Monamy in 1738. As there was no Royal Navy presence in Cork Harbour until a hundred years after the Water Club’s foundation, it was a notably self-created organisation in 1720. Courtesy RCYC
Yet there’s a remarkable element of sui generis in the foundation of the Water Club on Cork Harbour in 1720. They did not take their example from the locally-based naval set-up as is sometimes suggested, because the Royal Navy’s base on the south coast of Ireland was isolated at the compact and self-contained port of Kinsale until 1806, when it began its 14-year transfer to Haulbowline in Cork Harbour where, under some naval influence, the Water Club re-emerged as the Royal Cork YC in 1825.
Through the years of yachting development, from time to time people of significance, or on the make, took up the sport to heighten their profile and possibly achieve celebrity. Back in the day, when an Irish challenge for the biennial Admiral’s Cup was coming down the line, we’d find that someone we’d only previously read of in the business pages had become the owner of a potential Admiral’s Cup yacht, and in time we’d find out if his interest was genuine, or instead was only something undertaken on the advice of his PR man or woman to heighten his image.
BRINGING CELEBS INTO THE EQUATION
At the top level this involved bringing celebrities into the equation, if not at the trials then certainly in Cowes Week. Top level offshore racing in those days was very much a world unto itself, largely devoid of the smooth communication skills, and in those less complex days a salt-stained bunch of us were sitting post-racing in a corner of the old Groves & Guttridge yard where some enterprising soul had set up a beer bench.
The Blue Arrow sailing group – which had a chequered history in business ashore and campaigning afloat – came ashore with a bunch of celebs of the likes of Terry Wogan. But despite some efforts from their side, there was just about zero natural communication with the nautical athletes, perhaps because Wogan had reckoned that his golf kit was the ideal wear for a spot of yachting.
Then the PR world decided that celebs of sorts actually being on the sterns of the biggest racing yachts during a race would crack the public-attention problem, and they brought in an egregious Rent-a-Royal called Michael and installed him on the counter of a big American boat.
The crew-master came aft to check the mainsheet, and then shook the visitor’s hand and asked:
“Do we call you Mike ?”
“You most certainly don’t”, he snapped. “At the very least, you call me sir, and Your Royal Highness is preferred”
Not one further word was said to the visitor by the active crew for the entire race.
TED HEATH’S SUCCESS IN SYDNEY-HOBART
As for British Prime Minister Ted Heath’s involvement with sailing, they were trying to improve the image of a man with zero charisma who only came to life when the topic of conversation was on one of the very few topics in which he was obsessively interested.
The irony of it all was that he arrived in the sailing world with a bang, slicing through to success in the 1969 RORC season in Europe and then somehow getting the S&S 34 Morning Cloud to Australia where – under the guidance of Anthony Churchill’s absolutely brilliant strategy, tactics and navigation – he won the Sydney-Hobart Race outright.
Early days for the S&S 34 Morning Cloud, with Ted Heath on a steep learning curve on the helm. Photo: S&S34 Association.
There were successes back in Britain afterwards, but nothing quite matches that Hobart win, and today he is equally remembered for being so awkward a Prime Minister – the Incredible Sulk – that in 1974 strikes by power workers caused blackouts and the Three Day Week so thoroughly that the celebration of 150 years of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute had to be staged in St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle.
PRESIDENT HILLERY BRINGS BANNER COUNTY TO DUBLIN BAY
In Ireland, Patrick Hillery – President from 1976-1990 – did sailing a great service by taking to it as an ordinary enthusiast, sailing regularly from the Royal St George Yacht Club with the guidance and support of Jack Craig in the Ron Holland-designed Cork-built Club Shamrock Corcomroe, which the President named for one of the most sacred former monasteries in his home county of Clare.
Man of the sailing people. President Hillery with designer Billy Brown aboard the Ruffian 23 at the Dun Laoghaire Boat Show. Photo: W M Nixon
FDR JOINS CAA
The powerful politician of true greatness with whom sailors can most readily identify was the 32nd American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The decidedly distinguished Roosevelt clan was much into sailing, with George Roosevelt with his Sherman Hoyt-designed 70ft schooner Mistress being a keen Bermuda race competitor. Nevertheless when we discovered that FDR became a member of the Cruising Club of America in 1934, it was difficult to escape the cynical conclusion that this was a thank-you from thirsty sailors for his abolition of the 1920-introduced Prohibition in 1933.
George Roosevelt’s 70ft schooner Mistress was one of the rare designs from sailing genius Sherman Hoyt.
But even at that level there was more to it than that, as offshore sailing was being tainted by the use of yachts as rum runners while prohibition was in place. This is something which is brilliantly captured in Weston Martyr’s factoid book The Southseaman: The Life-story of a Schooner, first published in 1929 and a maritime classic on both sides of the Atlantic.
The schooner Southseaman, tragic heroine of Weston Martyr’s era-defining book. The schooner Amberjack that Franklin Roosevelt sailed to Canada was of a similar type.
However, FDR was worthy of his CCA place on the strength of his own sailing, for in 1933 – having worked himself to exhaustion with his “Hundred Days” of non-stop activity in Washington to turn the US off the path of recession – he went cruising towards Canada under his own command in the chartered Alden schooner Amberjack II with just himself and some professional crew, and personally succeeded in navigating some decidedly intricate channels and much fog before anchoring off one of the Roosevelt family’s remote summer cottages, a modest place of 20 bedrooms at Campobello in New Brunswick in Canada.
FDR achieved all this seafaring despite being increasingly debilitated by polio since 1921, when he was 39 years old. There are few if any American Presidents who are recalled with such fondness and respect, and his Amberjack cruise of 1933 seems like a breath of fresh air when we compare it with the machinations of today’s politicos afloat and ashore.
President Franklin D Roosevelt aboard the schooner Amberjack II before sailing her to Canada in 1933
